AnnieLee cleared her throat, trying to quell the rising fear. She felt like she was outside her body, floating off to the side, looking at her small frame all alone on that big stage.
Poor girl, she thought. She’s in way over her head.
Letting go of the mic, AnnieLee put her hands on the cool, solid wood of her guitar. She played a loud, bright chord to make the noise her mouth couldn’t. A few more: E, F sharp 5, G5, G sharp 5, and then A. Then her throat opened again, and she could speak.
“Hello, Salt Lake City,” she said. “Sorry about that little hiccup—I think I got a Pringle stuck in my throat.” She smiled brightly. “One of the hazards of touring, I guess. Constant low-level dehydration and a real excess of potato chips.” She could hear a little waver in her voice as she spoke. “Anyway, I guess I’ll shut up and play for you now.”
As she strummed the intro to “Driven,” she wondered if the audience could see the way her legs were shaking. She started to sing, but she had trouble calling up the lyrics. She skipped the second verse, and was as surprised as everyone else seemed to be when the song ended after two minutes.
“Well,” she said, feigning breezy nonchalance, “I wrote it, so I guess I’m allowed to change it up now and again, right?”
But her chest began to burn with dread. And she knew that the tenser she got, the more mistakes she would make. There were three hundred people in the room who had paid to see her, and she couldn’t let them down. She had to find her flow.
They don’t want to watch you fail, she thought, so don’t make them.
She picked the beginning to “Firecracker.”
Firecracker, I heard you callin’ me
Firecracker, that suits me to a T
The song was up-tempo, and she could feel herself gathering a bit of momentum.
I’m full of fire and passion, wound tight and aim to please
But if you want to play with fire, be mindful and take heed
Standin’ up for who I am and all that I believe
By the time the song was over, her legs had stopped trembling and her voice was coming out clear and strong. But she still felt vulnerable. Exposed. The audience was on her side—she’d won them over, at least until she screwed up again—but she couldn’t tap into their energy.
She turned toward stage left, where Ethan was waiting just beyond the curtain. She couldn’t see him, but she knew he was there.
He was always there.
And right now she needed him closer.
She called him out onstage, just like she’d promised she wouldn’t do again, at least not without warning him. She saw him come shuffling out, more than a shred of reluctance to his step, and she motioned for him to come right to her side.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I really need you.”
He nodded, head bent, concentrating on what she was saying.
“We’re going to sing ‘Love or Lust,’ and we’re going to do it on the same mic, okay?” She looked pleadingly at him. “I don’t want to be alone up here tonight.”
Ethan touched her elbow gently, fleetingly. “I guess you won’t be, then,” he said.
And then he stood so close to her that she could feel the heat of him all along the left side of her body, and their voices were instruments that they played together.
Love or lust
Do we doubt, do we trust?
Whatever it is, it’s stronger than us
As they sang, she could sense the way the air in the room changed. A hush settled over the crowd. They were seeing something almost unbearably intimate: two people singing with and to each other, alone in front of hundreds of strangers. Two people who looked for all the world like they were in a love so deep there weren’t even words to describe it.
Though they had rehearsed the song a hundred times, in hotel rooms and on empty stages, they hadn’t rehearsed it like this.
When the music ended, the applause was so loud and long-lasting that AnnieLee and Ethan stood there, blushing, unable to say anything over the noise.
Then AnnieLee turned to Ethan. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
He picked up her hand and kissed it. And then he left the stage.
Chapter
65
By the time they arrived at their hotel, AnnieLee was a delirious mix of elated and exhausted. The show had been teetering on the brink of disaster, but she’d pulled it back from the edge. She hadn’t let the threats from her past drag her down.
As she and Ethan rode up in the elevator together, though, she grew quiet, almost shy. The reason that the show had worked, of course, was that she’d called Ethan onto the stage. She didn’t mind admitting that he’d saved her; she didn’t have a Kip Hart–sized ego. But if she scratched below the surface of that fact, she’d be forced to acknowledge that it wasn’t about the song they’d sung. It wasn’t about the lyrics or the pleasing thirds of their harmonies. It was the way they had sung them. It was as if they were lost in their feelings for each other, and nothing else—not even the audience—mattered.